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 Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:07 am
 Eidil and Cal were unusual for academy students. Neither of them lived on-campus full-time, as both of them had at least one parent. It meant that if they wanted to hang out on the weekend, they went to one another’s house instead of one another’s dorm room; it meant that when they hung out on the weekends, they had access to a microwave for popcorn and a refrigerator for snacks. And, if they were going to Eidil’s house instead of Cal’s, they could play a video game or two. Normally that’s what they did when they got together at Eidil’s house. There was nothing quite like a go-kart game to test their friendship (and their unprintable vocabularies) and to waste away a perfectly good afternoon. Unfortunately, the family’s game box was currently at the shop for repairs, which meant that Eidil was without games for a week or two. Still, her scheduled weekend with Cal did not go canceled. They’d just have to find something else to do.
Normally that meant taking a walk. Two things made that option nonviable, however. The first thing was that it was pouring rain outside, and neither girl was particularly eager to get soggy wet. The second thing was that Haunted Hallows was in a few weeks and the girls were making their own costumes together. That meant that they were gathered around the dining room table with glue, masks, feathers, and fake leaves spread across the surface. Eidil leaned back in her chair and pulled out a magazine. It would take a few minutes for the glue on her mask to dry.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:08 am
 It was disappointing that they wouldn’t get to play video games like they normally did. Eidil had been talking about some new light-hearted shooter game involving ambulatory plants and cuttlefish, but it looked like that game would just have to wait another day. In the meantime, it was time for the two of them to get cracking on their Halloween costumes. It had been Cal’s idea. They’d go as nature spirits, with Cal as a Leaf-faced Nightmare and Eidil as the spirit of the animals. It had taken Cal a bit of convincing to get Eidil to agree, but by the end of that conversation they had been discussing how to pull off the looks. Either way, they weren’t going to go this year in the same costumes as last year.
Green overalls, a green coat, and a whole lot of fake leaves all wrapped around her. That was pretty much the extent of Cal’s costume, but with a brown and green wig thrown in for good measure and a mask covered in leaves. That should get the desired effect. Eidil’s costume was going to be far more complex, with feathers and faux fur and a couple of fake tails, but for some reason, her friend was taking her time. She shook her head. Cal had far more free time on her hands, as she didn’t have to move in and move out every week. Sure, she had a whole lot of chores around her mother’s small farm—she took care of their vegetables, was responsible for the harvest, coordinated with local vegetable stands to sell their products, oh, they’d have to put some pumpkins out…
Okay, so maybe Eidil did have more time to waste, but it still seemed weird for her to be taking a break to look at a magazine. “What’s that?” Cal asked as she carefully pressed a leaf into the wet glue.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:11 am
Eidil looked up from the magazine. “It’s Today, Today!. I picked it up for the Haunted Hallows tips, but they have a personality quiz here that they claim will tell you what your weaknesses are. They’ve got some tips in here, too, on how to work on your weaknesses and fix your flaws.” She glanced over at Cal. Cal was currently trying to rush through the work, pressing a fake leaf into the glue on another leaf whose glue had not yet dried. Not that it’s hard to figure out what your flaws are, my feathered beauty… It was not only a rude thought, but also a very mean-hearted one. She pushed it out of mind and leaned forward to grab a pencil. “I haven’t taken the quiz yet. I guess I was waiting until later to do it.”
She idly reached out to tap the mask. Nope, still wet. Let’s see, when the mask was done, she needed to do a fascinator and a cape. She had a pair of boots that would work well with the costume, and a skirt. She didn’t need to worry too much about the rest of the costume, although she also wanted to add feathers wherever she could. Maybe a belt of them? Yes, that would look good, especially if she could find or make some fake claws to go with them. “I know you don’t normally like magazines, but I like this one,” she added. “They’ve got cooking tips and news about upcoming movies.” Admittedly they tended to be diet cooking tips and news about the actors appearing in the upcoming movies, but one should always accentuate the positive rather than dwell on the negative. Cal, she was sure, would not approve of the magazine, no matter what was in it.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:12 am
Cal did not approve of magazine stand rags, no matter what were in them. They were always about seventy-five percent gossip (only two percent of which were true) and catty comments about the clothes that those celebrities wore. It was to avoid this sort of thing that Cal’s mother didn’t have a television. Movie dates she could look up online—extra information about the movies would just distract her or spoil important plot points, so she preferred to avoid them when at all possible. As for cooking? The Fair Farmer Cookbook was the only cookbook anyone needed, unless they wanted to do ethnic or seasonal foods. Hmph. Magazines. Rags, more like.
Cal growled in frustration as two of the leaves peeled off of the mask. Rats! The glue was too wet to work with, and getting all over her fingers. Everything was sticking to her fingers, and yes, that fake leaf with its real glue on it just landed in her lap, so she had a lap full of glue to deal with. Great. Cal shoved the mask and the offending leaves aside, crossed her arms, and leaned back in her chair. “Okay,” she growled. “Hit me with it.”
She might not enjoy magazines, but she wasn’t going to turn down Eidil (when she had no better ideas). Besides, this was the sort of thing gal pals were supposed to do with each other, right? No point in refusing now, even if she thought it was dumb and pointless. Some magazine can’t tell me what my flaws are, she thought rebelliously. Magazines are written by vapid people who don’t know me.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:13 am
Eidil winced as first the mask’s leaves fell apart, then Cal reacted so violently. That was…not good. It bothered her when Cal did that—did she know how frightening it was, or how much damage she could do to a good table like this? She could even ruin the mask, which would waste all of the effort she’d put into it so far. It just wasn’t a good idea in any way, and it was…well, it was very off-putting. Eidil felt like somehow this was becoming all her fault, even if she knew it wasn’t. “A-alright,” she stammered. She straightened her throat and flipped through the magazine. “Where is it, where is it, where is it…” She skimmed through it, then stopped on a certain page. “Ah, here it is! Alright, first question…”
She went through the questions, asking Cal each one, then marking down Cal’s [gruff, short-tempered, graceless] responses. At the end of the quiz, she took note of all of the answers and read out the reply. “‘You are a tough, no-nonsense individual with a lot of independence,’” she read. “‘You know what you want and how to get it. However,’” Eidil paused. She stared at the page and tried hard to fight back a giggle. No. No giggling. Not while she read this out loud. She needed to be super serious when reading this. She coughed to cover up, and thought of the most serious thing she could think of. Sick bats. Ah, there we go. “‘However, you lack patience in most aspects of your life, including patience with your friends and loved ones and patience in home activities. You constantly feel under attack.’”
Eidil looked up from the page at Cal. “Sh-should I read what it says for advice?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:15 am
The questions were dumb. They were stupid, and vapid, and for some reason, all of the best answers were always A. She wasn’t consciously trying to pick all of the A answers, but those always ended up being the best ones. Okay, okay, they weren’t “best.” Nothing was supposed to be “best” in a personality quiz. They were supposed to be…well, they were supposed to reflect a broad range of people. And in a quiz that had answers ranging from A to F, she had to admit it did have a lot of range. It’s just that her answers were pretty much always A.
When the moment of truth came, the mask had dried enough for Cal to re-glue the detached leaves to it. However, she paused to listen to Eidil’s pronouncement. Tough? Oh, yes. Cal nodded. No-nonsense? Definitely, definitely. Cal was starting to feel proud. See? It had good things to say about her. Independence was a virtue, not a vice. But then came the However. And belatedly she realized that of course there was a However. There was always a However in these sorts of things. They’d even warned her about it—they’d said this was a quiz to “inform and improve” the reader, right? She should’ve known that after they sucked up to her, they’d throw in a However. So here it was, the However, which arrived with a hesitation from Eidil, which was an even worse sign.
Lacking patience? She had plenty of patience! She grew vegetables! She—still had glue on her fingers and kept trying to work on the mask while it was wet. Suddenly Eidil taking a break to look at a quiz made sense. She looked over at the feathers glued onto Eidil’s mask. Cal sighed. “Yeah. I guess.” I do feel under attack. At the moment, by this quiz!
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:16 am
Eidil straightened her throat again and plunged right in. The stormy look on Cal’s face had been replaced by a look of resignation. “‘Advice: You need to learn how to relax! Another person’s enjoyment of the things you don’t like is not an attack or a commentary on your point of view. Think of,’” Okay, this time Eidil couldn’t help it. She giggled. She giggled hard. She giggled until the giggles turned into chuckles, the chuckles turned into laughs, and the laughs turned into guffaws. She was bent forwards, tears in her eyes, struggling to breathe. Okay, okay. Think of sick batties. Okay. Breathe, Eidil, breathe. Remember. Sick bats in Zephyros. Breathe, breathe.
Okay? Now try again. “‘Think of a tree. That must grow. From a ti, a tiny acorn.’” She stopped again, overcome by giggles. This time she was joined in by Cal. “‘Think of a tree! That must grow from a tiny acorn, it must be patient to reach great heights, just as you must be patient to achieve your goals!!’” Eidil set down the magazine and wiped her eyes. “Okay, Cal, we should call the police, because the publishers are obviously stalking you!” She snorted, then pulled herself forward to the table. Yep, the glue was dry now. Time to go back to adding the feathers to her mask. “So, um, anyway.” She laughed again. “Maybe we should make you an acorn pendant, to remember that.”
She shook her head as the last fuzzy feelings of laughter finally ebbed in her head. “I…I think the quiz is right, Cal. You do need to…well, you need to relax, you know?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:17 am
Cal tried to pay attention to the advice without criticizing it. Okay, so, learn how to relax. How? How could she relax with so many things going on? She had to finish her costume, she had to sell the pumpkins before Haunted Hallows, and it was her turn to muck out the fennekit barn when she got home. There was too much to think about to relax properly! Did people at magazines not have stressful events? She sighed internally. No, they must have. They had to have deadlines just like every other publication ever, right? So how could they tell her to relax? How was someone even supposed to relax? She refused to go to a massage parlor or whatever, and aroma therapy was right out. Some people might have been into it, but so far as Cal was concerned, the scent of a candle should have more to do with what she liked than how she wanted to feel. As for a warm bath? Puh-lease. She had work to do. She didn’t have time for stuff like baths. Showers were good enough for her! As for the other thing? She didn’t—!! Well, okay, she did. She did dislike it when people raved about stuff she hated. She’d never pretend it was an attack on her, though.
And then it came right out of the blue. Cal stared, bewildered, at her friend until Eidil finally coughed up what had made her laugh. Cal smiled, then began to laugh. She couldn’t help it—Eidil’s laughter was infectious. “Yeah, how did they know I like plants so much?” she asked. An acorn into a tiny tree… She could try that…
Cal sighed. “Is there any advice in there as to how to relax, Eidil?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:18 am
Eidil flipped through the magazine and sighed. “I don’t think so. I think they just expected their regular readers to already know what it was. Pity neither of us are regular readers.” Okay, Eidil was, but she wasn’t going to admit that to Cal, at least not right now. “I think you could maybe relax by listening to a CD of soothing music or something?” She laid out another feather and pressed it firmly into the papier mache. “That’s how people are always saying that you’re supposed to relax. They always mention music or thinking of a happy place or something. I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know if it’s any good or not.”
She snuck a glance at Cal. She looked so upset! Eidil bit her lip. She didn’t like the idea of her best friend being upset. It just wasn’t right. Sure, Cal made her upset sometimes, but that didn’t mean she deserved to be upset as well. She reached out to grab Cal’s hand and squeeze it reassuringly and smiled. “Hey, Cal, don’t worry about it. It’s just a stupid magazine, okay? Sure, you’re a little…impatient with people, but…” She struggled for something that was both reassuring and honest. “If it bothers you, I can help you out. You’re not alone, y’know? If you need any help, or some advice, or a shoulder to cry on, you know I’m there for you. I’ve always been there for you. Just like you’ve always been there for me!” Cal had always been there for her, to listen to her pointless crushes, or to listen to a rant about some finding in biology, or to commiserate about a frustrating homework assignment. She wouldn’t be a very good friend if she couldn’t be there for Cal in return.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:20 am
Cal made a face. “Ah, this must be where ‘easy listening’ comes in.” She handled the phrase with contempt, firmly ignoring the voice in the back of her head that said that about half of what she listened to was classified by her MP3 player as “easy listening.” It didn’t matter, no one liked easy listening music, even if they loved it. It just wasn’t done. “Either that or those eighty crown CDs that are just thirty minutes of raindrops hitting the sidewalk or something. I don’t really see how that could make me relax under any circumstance.”
She set her mask down and leaned back with a sigh. “Sorry for being so down, Eidil,” she muttered. “I just…” I didn’t like what the magazine had to say about me. I didn’t like how it presumed to give me advice on how to live my life. I didn’t like—I don’t like—how it hit close to home. They’re right, I am short and impatient with people. I do get angry easily, and I rush into things without thinking about them nearly as much as I should. But it’s not nice to have all of your flaws laid out on display like that. “Is there anyone who takes those personality quizzes and gets ‘Hey, you go, you have a great personality, don’t change’? Why do people take quizzes if they’re just going to be insulting like that?”
Her heart skipped a beat as Eidil’s warm hand closed over it. She reached out instinctively with her other hand to close over the top of Eidil’s. Eidil’s hands were always soft, was that because she used moisturizer? She numbly wondered if her own hands were coarse and rough, and whether she should use moisterizer herself sometime to make them feel nicer. “Thank you, Eidil,” she said, blinking back tears. “You’re a true friend.”
I love you.
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